Pak arrests another US national on Suspicion of espionage
ISLAMABAD: As the lingering dispute over immunity for the detained CIA official Raymond Davis continues, Pakistan’s law enforcement agencies have arrested yet another US national on Friday from Peshawar on suspicion of espionage.
According to sources,

He was arrested from Jamrud Road and was taken by intelligenc agencies to an undisclosed location for interrogation. Well-placed sources told TOI that Dehaven had been living, for the past three years, in Peshawar’s Falcon Colony, one of the most secured residential areas in the city. He had set up a private office in the country’s volatile city and had hired several locals.

Sometimes back, he was converted to Islam and married a local woman working in his office.

Sources claimed that Dehaven was originally tasked to provide security to the visiting US officials to Peshawar.

Intelligence officials have confiscated his vehicle, carrying Islamabad’s number plate—QB 565 and two cell phones.

A case has been filed against him under the Foreigners Act and he will be produced in a local court on Saturday. Without specifying his status, the US embassy said they were looking into the matter.

According to Pakistan’s minister of state for foreign affairs Hina Rabbani Khar, 2,570 officials from 78 different countries working in Pakistan have diplomatic immunity while 55 foreign national are not covered by the immunity blanket.

Presenting a list of foreign nationals enjoying diplomatic immunity in the National Assembly, she said that the US has 851 officials in Pakistan and 54 of them do not have diplomatic immunity. Khar also said that the US had the largest number of officials with diplomatic immunity in the country. end snip

“DeHaven runs a company named Catalyst Services which, according to its website, is staffed by retired military and defense department personnel who have “played some role in major world events” including the collapse of the Soviet Union, the military mission to Somalia and the “global war on terror”.

One prospective customer who met DeHaven last year described him as a small, slightly-built man, who wore glasses and had broad knowledge of Pakistani politics.

DeHaven said he had lived in Kandahar, Afghanistan, for one year, had married a Pakistani woman along the border with Afghanistan, and spoke Pashto fluently.He said he moved his base from Peshawar to Islamabad last year over suspicions that he worked for Blackwater, the controversial US military contracting firm.
His business partner is listed on company documents as Hunter Obrikat with an address in Charlotte, North Carolina.

The Guardian was unable to contact either men at listed numbers in Pakistan, Afghanistan, the US and Dubai.

US embassy spokeswoman Courtney Beale said DeHaven was “not a direct employee of the US government” but added that details could not be confirmed until a consular officer had met him.

The arrest is another sign of brittle relations between the two countries.

end snip

So Where is this all leading, perhaps more riots and protests like in neighbouring countries?

Interestingly the Malays have defined themselves as ‘Bumiputra’, transliterated as ‘Prince of the earth,’ and as ‘Ketuanan Melayu’ or Malay Lords or Masters…very much along the theme as the ‘chosen people’.

=============================================

The Price of Malaysia’s Racism

Slower growth and a drain of talented citizens are only the beginning.

Malaysia’s national tourism agency promotes the country as “a bubbling, bustling melting pot of races and religions where Malays, Indians, Chinese and many other ethnic groups live together in peace and harmony.” Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak echoed this view when he announced his government’s theme, One Malaysia. “What makes Malaysia unique,” Mr. Najib said, “is the diversity of our peoples. One Malaysia’s goal is to preserve and enhance this unity in diversity, which has always been our strength and remains our best hope for the future.”

If Mr. Najib is serious about achieving that goal, a long look in the mirror might be in order first. Despite the government’s new catchphrase, racial and religious tensions are higher today than when Mr. Najib took office in 2009. Indeed, they are worse than at any time since 1969, when at least 200 people died in racial clashes between the majority Malay and minority Chinese communities. The recent deterioration is due to the troubling fact that the country’s leadership is tolerating, and in some cases provoking, ethnic factionalism through words and actions.

For instance, when the Catholic archbishop of Kuala Lumpur invited the prime minister for a Christmas Day open house last December, Hardev Kaur, an aide to Mr. Najib, said Christian crosses would have to be removed. There could be no carols or prayers, so as not to offend the prime minister, who is Muslim. Ms. Kaur later insisted that she “had made it clear that it was a request and not an instruction,” as if any Malaysian could say no to a request from the prime minister’s office.

Similar examples of insensitivity abound. In September 2009, Minister of Home Affairs Hishammuddin Onn met with protesters who had carried the decapitated head of a cow, a sacred animal in the Hindu religion, to an Indian temple. Mr. Hishammuddin then held a press conference defending their actions. Two months later, Defense Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi told Parliament that one reason Malaysia’s armed forces are overwhelmingly Malay is that other ethnic groups have a “low spirit of patriotism.” Under public pressure, he later apologized.

The leading Malay language newspaper, Utusan Melayu, prints what opposition leader Lim Kit Siang calls a daily staple of falsehoods that stoke racial hatred. Utusan, which is owned by Mr. Najib’s political party, has claimed that the opposition would make Malaysia a colony of China and abolish the Malay monarchy. It regularly attacks Chinese Malaysian politicians, and even suggested that one of them, parliamentarian Teresa Kok, should be killed.

Associated PressEthnic Indian Malaysians protesting in 2007.

This steady erosion of tolerance is more than a political challenge. It’s an economic problem as well.

Once one of the developing world’s stars, Malaysia’s economy has underperformed for the past decade. To meet its much-vaunted goal of becoming a developed nation by 2020, Malaysia needs to grow by 8% per year during this decade. That level of growth will require major private investment from both domestic and foreign sources, upgraded human skills, and significant economic reform. Worsening racial and religious tensions stand in the way.

Almost 500,000 Malaysians left the country between 2007 and 2009, more than doubling the number of Malaysian professionals who live overseas. It appears that most were skilled ethnic Chinese and Indian Malaysians, tired of being treated as second-class citizens in their own country and denied the opportunity to compete on a level playing field, whether in education, business, or government. Many of these emigrants, as well as the many Malaysian students who study overseas and never return (again, most of whom are ethnic Chinese and Indian), have the business, engineering, and scientific skills that Malaysia needs for its future. They also have the cultural and linguistic savvy to enhance Malaysia’s economic ties with Asia’s two biggest growing markets, China and India.

Of course, one could argue that discrimination isn’t new for these Chinese and Indians. Malaysia’s affirmative action policies for its Malay majority—which give them preference in everything from stock allocation to housing discounts—have been in place for decades. So what is driving the ethnic minorities away now?

First, these minorities increasingly feel that they have lost a voice in their own government. The Chinese and Indian political parties in the ruling coalition are supposed to protect the interests of their communities, but over the past few years, they have been neutered. They stand largely silent in the face of the growing racial insults hurled by their Malay political partners. Today over 90% of the civil service, police, military, university lecturers, and overseas diplomatic staff are Malay. Even TalentCorp, the government agency created in 2010 that is supposed to encourage overseas Malaysians to return home, is headed by a Malay, with an all-Malay Board of Trustees.

Second, economic reform and adjustments to the government’s affirmative action policies are on hold. Although Mr. Najib held out the hope of change a year ago with his New Economic Model, which promised an “inclusive” affirmative action policy that would be, in Mr. Najib’s words, “market friendly, merit-based, transparent and needs-based,” he has failed to follow through. This is because of opposition from right-wing militant Malay groups such as Perkasa, which believe that a move towards meritocracy and transparency threatens what they call “Malay rights.”

Scene Asia

But stalling reform will mean a further loss in competitiveness and slower growth. It also means that the cronyism and no-bid contracts that favor the well-connected will continue. All this sends a discouraging signal to many young Malaysians that no matter how hard they study or work, they will have a hard time getting ahead.

Mr. Najib may not actually believe much of the rhetoric emanating from his party and his government’s officers, but he tolerates it because he needs to shore up his Malay base. It’s politically convenient at a time when his party faces its most serious opposition challenge in recent memory—and especially when the opposition is challenging the government on ethnic policy and its economic consequences. One young opposition leader, parliamentarian Nurul Izzah Anwar, the daughter of former deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim, has proposed a national debate on what she called the alternative visions of Malaysia’s future—whether it should be a Malay nation or a Malaysian nation. For that, she earned the wrath of Perkasa; the government suggested her remark was “seditious.”

Malaysia’s government might find it politically expedient to stir the racial and religious pot, but its opportunism comes with an economic price tag. Its citizens will continue to vote with their feet and take their money and talents with them. And foreign investors, concerned about racial instability and the absence of meaningful economic reform, will continue to look elsewhere to do business.

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

News that the American accused of killing two Pakistani men is a CIA contractor has intensified an already highly charged situation in Pakistan.

“Raymond Davis is a CIA Guy,” read the headline in the Daily Times newspaper Tuesday.

***

Davis was jailed January 27 after fatally shooting two men who pulled up to him on a motorcycle in a bustling Lahore neighborhood.

***

The 36-year-old Davis is a former member of the U.S. Army special forces and had been employed by security firm XE Services, previously known as Blackwater.

Davis began working for the CIA nearly four years ago. He was assigned to Pakistan in late 2009. He was living with other security personnel at a safehouse in Lahore before the shooting incident.

On Monday, a U.S. government official also said that Davis was a CIA contractor providing security for CIA officers.

The U.S. at first falsely claimed that Davis was a diplomat with the State Department and should therefore be granted diplomatic immunity:

Despite the revelation of Davis’ true line of work, U.S. officials on Monday renewed their argument that he has diplomatic immunity and must be released.

***
Before Monday, U.S. officials had described Davis only as an employee who was attached to the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad and who was working at the U.S. Consulate in Lahore at the time of the shootings.

But the deeper story is that Davis allegedly actively aided and abetted terrorism. As CNN notes:

Some newspapers cited unnamed sources to link Davis with “terrorist activity” and the Pakistani Taliban.

“CIA agent Davis had ties with local militants,” read the headline in The Express Tribune.

“His close ties with the TTP (The Pakistani Taliban) were revealed during the investigations,” the paper quoted the police official as saying. “Davis was instrumental in recruiting young people from Punjab for the Taliban to fuel the insurgency.”

Indeed, one of South Asia ‘s largest news agencies (ANI) reports that – according to Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service – Davis was giving nuclear and biowarfare materials to Al-Qaeda:

Double murder-accused US official Raymond Davis has been found in possession of top-secret CIA documents, which point to him or the feared American Task Force 373 (TF373) operating in the region, providing Al-Qaeda terrorists with “nuclear fissile material” and “biological agents,” according to a report.Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) is warning that the situation on the sub-continent has turned “grave” as it appears that open warfare is about to break out between Pakistan and the United States, The European Union Times reports.

The SVR warned in its report that the apprehension of 36-year-old Davis, who shot dead two Pakistani men in Lahore last month, had fuelled this crisis.

According to the report, the combat skills exhibited by Davis, along with documentation taken from him after his arrest, prove that he is a member of US’ TF373 black operations unit currently operating in the Afghan War Theatre and Pakistan’s tribal areas, the paper said.

While the US insists that Davis is one of their diplomats, and the two men he killed were robbers, Pakistan says that the duo were ISI agents sent to follow him after it was discovered that he had been making contact with al Qaeda, after his cell phone was tracked to the Waziristan tribal area bordering Afghanistan, the paper said.

The most ominous point in this SVR report is “Pakistan’s ISI stating that top-secret CIA documents found in Davis’s possession point to his, and/or TF373, providing to al Qaeda terrorists “nuclear fissile material” and “biological agents”, which they claim are to be used against the United States itself in order to ignite an all-out war in order to re-establish the West’s hegemony over a Global economy that is warned is just months away from collapse,” the paper added.

Note: I cannot corroborate at this point that the allegations are accurate, since ANI does not link to any source materials. A reader claims that the ANI allegations started with Sorcha Faal, a well-known flake. If Faal is the ultimate source of ANI’s claims, then ANI has been pranked.